Method of producing decorative sheet material



E. T. IGLER Aug. 25, 1970 METHOD OF PRODUCING DECORATIVE SHEET MATERIALFiled Dec. 15, 1966 FIG.I

8282 @EEIQ FIG.6

IN VEN TOR. Emma/1th T /g/er Affomey United States Patent 3,525,633METHOD OF PRODUCING DECORATIVE SHEET MATERIAL Emmerich T. Igler, 120 W.12th St.,

New York, N.Y. 10011 Filed Dec. 15, 1966, Ser. No. 602,020

Int. Cl. B44c 3/08 US. Cl. 117-8 6 Claims ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE Toproduce decorative sheet material having a relief effect, initially flatmetal foil is printed or coated 'with coloring material and then dried,followed by crushing or crumpling of the material, and finally spreadingout or smoothing to achieve the final product.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION The field of invention to which the presentsubject matter relates is the processing of certain sheet materials toimpart thereto a unique ornamental effect for use in commercialapplications and as an element of fine art.

It is known in the prior art to print, paint or other- Wise color thesurface of metal foil, such as aluminum foil, in generally the samemanner that canvas, bristolboard and like materials are employed. In allsuch work, particularly where paint is applied to produce a dappled orvariegated design, the artist or decorator attempts to achieve a grainedor three-dimensional relief effect by means of his skill. It has beenvery difficult to achieve this effect realistically working with smoothor flat sheet material, and no ready means of producing the desiredgrained or relief effect has been available in the prior art. Variousprior art teachings involve producing creped, corrugated or otherdeformed sheet material along with coloring or other decoratingprocedures, but these processes generally produce only a monotonous anduniform design effect which will not meet the needs of a highly variedartistic colored grained or relief surface. The present inventionsatisfies the need for such a decorative or artistic material which hasbeen made available by the prior art.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION According to the invention process, aninitially smooth sheet of thin metal foil or other sheet material, suchas various types of relatively stiff or stiffened paper, is painted orprinted on one surface thereof, preferably in such a manner that adappled or variegated color design is produced. Following this, aftersufficient drying, the sheet material is crushed or crumpled to adesirable degree, after which the same material is smoothed outpartially or spread to a rough planar condition to produce the finalarticle which possesses a striking permanent three-dimensional grainedor relief effect, greatly enhancing the appearance of the product. Theprocess may be practiced manually or by the use of certain apparatuscomponents and the uses of the product are manifold and should bereadily apparent to those skilled in the art.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING FIG. 1 is an actual photographic planview of a section of smooth metal foil having paint in a variegatedpattern on one surface thereof;

FIG. 2 is a vertical section taken on line 22 of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a photographic plan view similar to FIG. 1 showing the samesection of painted foil after the latter has first been crumpled andthen partially smoothed or spread to produce the desired grained reliefeffect;

3,525,633 Patented Aug. 25, 1970 ice FIG. 4 is a vertical section takenon line 44 of FIG. 3;

FIG. 5 is a partly diagrammatic elevational view showing the material ofFIG. 1 in a crumpled or crushed condition prior to smoothing out; and

FIG. 6 is a digrammatic plan view of apparatus for use in the practiceof the method on a commercial scale.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS In the accompanying drawingswherein like numerals designate like parts, attention is direction firstto FIGS. l-5 inclusive which illustrate an article produced inaccordance with the most simplified form of the method which may bepracticed manually. In FIG. 1, the numeral 10 designates a small sectionof the invention material in the initial phase of the process. Thismaterial 10 com prises a smooth body portion of sheet 11 of aluminumfoil or some other similar metal foil which may be quite thin. Anordinary grade of commercial aluminum foil commonly used in the homekitchen is quite adequate for the purposes of the invention. Certaintypes of paper or other sheet material may be used instead of the metalfoil provided these sheet materials have the ability to retain thenecessary permanently wrinkled or grained relief effect after crumplingor crushing followed by smoothing. Other types of webbing or sheetmaterial, such as conventional paper of various weights, may besubstituted for the metal foil backing sheet, so long as it ischaracterized by sufficient body to retain the threedimensionaldistortion after the smoothing operation. The requisite body may be aninherent characteristic provided in the manufacture of the sheetmaterial, such as relatively heavy sheets of paper, or resultappreciably from the decorative coating applied to a surface thereof,e.g., thin tracing paper appreciably stiffened by the dried coating ofpaint. The contouring remaining in the painted surface after thespreading or laying out of the previously crumpled or folded sheet togenerally planar form may be characterized by relatively deep offsettingfrom front to back of the order of about an appreciable fraction of aninch to a full inch, or even deeper if desired, depending on the finalornamental effect desired. The term partially smoothing used hereinidentifies any such spreading or laying out operation, in addition tothat resulting from a more complete flattening wherein the remainingcontouring is of relatively shallow depth, or even should it involvepassing the previously crumpled or folded sheet through nips or beneathrollers to flatten the creases or folds to compacted wrinkles where-bythe major portions of the painted surface are finally disposed closelyto a generally common plane.

On one face of the foil sheet 11 there is applied a coating of acrylicplastic paint 12 or some other form of plastic paint, oil paint or likecoloring composition. Ordinary water colors may be employed with aconsiderable degree of success and the one surface of the sheet 11 maybe printed in various known Ways, if preferred. However, it is thoughtthat the acrylic plastic paint and similar compositions are ideallysuited to-the needs of the invention.

Preferably, although not necessarily, the paint 12 is applied to thefoil sheet 11 in multiple colors and in a dappled or variegated pattern.Such a multicolored variegated pattern is depicted in FIG. 1. Ifpreferred, a more regular design pattern may be employed and the processmay even be applied to landscape scenes, portraits and the like,employing the required color combinations.

The paint 12 is allowed an adequate time to dry substantially and thematerial 10 is then subjected to crushing or crumpling as depicted inFIG. 5. The material may be worked into a ball-like mass by hand and thedesired amount of crushing pressure is applied to the mass. Such acondition of the material is shown in FIG. 5. It should be noted herethat the relative fineness of the grained relief effect in the finalproduct is dependent somewhat upon the degree of crushing or crumplingpressure applied to the material and this pressure can be controlled andvaried to produce a larger relief grain or a smaller relief grain in thefinal product. Increased pressure on the crumpled material reduces grainsize and reduced pressure results in a larger grain size for thefinished product. The relief or grained effect referred to hereindesignates the permanently wrinkled condition imparted to the materialby the crumpling or crushing step of the invention.

As shown in FIGS. 3 and 4, the final step of the method comprisespartially straightening out or smoothing of the crumpled mass to agenerally flat or planar condition but with the aforementioned permanentwrinkles present. In the smoothing process, even though considerablepressure is applied to the sheet material by hand or otherwise, asignificant degree of wrinkling and a resultant grainedthree-dimensional relief effect will always remain in the final productand this effect is shown clearly in FIGS. 3 and 4 where the oppositesurfaces of the sheet material are very irregular.

The above method steps of coating or painting the initially smooth sheetmaterial, followed by the steps of crumpling or crushing and thenpartially smoothing out the material impart to it a very strikingdecorative effect on the painted surface 12. The material so producedmay be used in a variety of ways for commercial decorating and artisticeffects.

Diagrammatic FIG. 6 shows apparatus for use in the practice of themethod on a commercial or mass scale. The invention concept remains thesame as in the previous simplified manual embodiment. In FIG. 6, thenumeral 13 designates a supply roll for a continuous strip 14 ofaluminum foil or other like material. Following the supply roll 13 is amulticolor printing or painting machine 15 of a known type. Spaced fromthe machine 15 is a suitable drier 16 for the now decorated material andfollowing the drier, at a convenient point, is a crumpler or crusher 17having an inlet guide 18. The crumpled material emerges from thecrumpler at 14 and then passes through a spreader or smoothing device 19from which it emerges as the finished grained or relief product 14a tobe wound up on a suitable takeup roll 20. Variations in the apparatusare also contemplated within the scope of the invention.

The essential method steps in FIG. 6 remain basically the same aspreviously described for the manual method. The initial sheet material14 is smooth. The desired color pattern is placed on one face thereof bythe machine 15. The decorated material passes next to the drier 16 andthen to the crumpler 17 and to the smoother 19, after which it is rolledonto the takeup roll 20. The sheet material may move continuously at aslow rate. The final product 14a will exhibit in general the sameornamental or decorative qualities as the finished material 10 in FIG.4.

An important adaptation of the invention resides in providing pads ortablets of metal foil which would be similar to drawing and writingpaper pads. The individual sheets would then be utilized by an artist ordecorator in accordance with the foregoing teachings of the invention.This is a highly convenient and economical way of supplying the basicmaterial to those who wish to practice the invention method.

A number of typical uses of the finished material produced in accordancewith the method include gift Wrapping, decorative underlays for glasstop tables, framed or unframed decorative wall plaques, decorativecoverings for various receptacles or ornaments and the like.

When the material is furnished in roll form, it may be in a plainunprinted or unpainted condition or it may be predecorated with paint orprinting so that the user need only crumple the material and partiallysmooth it prior to usage.

It is to be understood that the forms of the invention herewith shownand described are to be taken as preferred examples of the same and thatvarious changes in the shape, size and arrangement of elements may beresorted to, without departing from the spirit of the invention or scopeof the subjoined claims.

What is claimed is:

1. A method of producing decorative sheet material comprising the stepsof applying coloring material in a random pattern to at least one sideof a substantially smooth and wrinkle-free web of metal foil, drying theweb of metal foil with the coloring material thereon, crumpling the webafter drying and thereby permanently wrinkling the web having thecoloring material thereon, and then smoothing and spreading the crumpledweb into a substantially flat condition and imparting to the web apermanent grained relief appearance, said grained relief extending overcolored areas of the web.

2. The method as defined by claim 1, and the additional steps of movingthe web of metal foil longitudinally during the application of coloringmaterial, drying, crumpling and smoothing and simultaneously drawing theWrinkle-free web from a supply roll, and winding up the finisheddecorative material on a takeup roll.

3. The method as defined by claim 1, and wherein said coloring materialconsists of multiple colors applied to the Web in a random pattern.

4. The method as defined by claim 3, and wherein said multiple colorsare applied to the web by a multicolor printing apparatus.

5. The method as defined by claim 1, and wherein said applied coloringmaterial is in the form of a coating of paint.

6. The method as defined by claim 5, and said paint is an acrylicplastic paint.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 1,481,567 l/1924- Senseney 1l7l1X 3,054,762 9/1962 Rees. 3,082,510 3/1963 Kelly et al. 117-8 X ALFRED L.LEAVITT, Primary Examiner C. K. WEIFFENBACH, Assistant Examiner U.S. Cl.X.R. 117-652, 66

